Continuing education is absolutely crucial for the safety of the patients or clients who depend on the nurse’s updated knowledge and skills related to patient care. Research found that, nurses who are motivated to do well in continuing professional education programs will gain more knowledge and skills than less motivated nurses. The purpose of the study was to determine the motivation of the staff nurses in pursuing continuing education and its relationship to their competencies. Using a descriptive – correlation design, questionnaire served as primary tool adapted from Mathieu & Martineau and Competencies Outcome Performance AssessmentModel to gather the data. The result showed that majority of the staff nurses are diploma degree holders; the staffnurses displayed low motivation in pursuing continuing education; the major outcomes desired of attending continuing education are as follows: 1) improve job competence; 2) improve self – confidence and 3) gain pay increase; there is a significant relationship between expectancy and critical thinkingrs 0.259, p value 0.012; there is no significant relationship between staff nurses’ profile and their motivation in pursuing continuing education.; the staff nurses’ on-going training still need to be improved on communication skills, assessment and intervention skills, management skills, human caring/relationship skills, and leadership skills. The result of this study recommends to encourage the staff nurses to enroll in bachelor degree course in order to understand / expand their knowledge in management/ leadership and clinical practice; for nurse administration to support attendance at continuing education programs and should consider assisting nurses to select continuing professional education programs that would be useful to their jobs; attend the seminars, trainings or other continuing education program must be made mandatory for staff nurses; to recognize the desired outcomes in order to formulate other motivating factors; all nursing managers be encouraged to enforce and then sustain ways or approaches in showing appreciation or recognition of outstanding or excellent performances by staff nurses; to utilize the training program design proposed in order to improve the competencies of the staff nurses that will lead to the better outcomes of the patients; or future researchers to conduct a study on assessing the motivation of the leaders/manager in pursuing continuing education and utilize the other theory of motivation.